I found him in oncology, smaller under fluorescent lights, his hospital bracelet an accusation and a confession. Eight months, I said, like the number itself could bruise him. Our daughter’s birthday. Thanksgiving. Our anniversary. All the nights I thought he was choosing the hospital over us when he was, in fact, choosing to carry his own terror alone. I thought I was protecting you, he whispered, as if protection were something you did by locking the door from the inside. I told him what Emma had already sensed without words: we had been afraid anyway, only of the wrong thing. So I sat through chemo drips and two a.m. panic, asked the questions he couldn’t, and refused to leave the room he’d finally let me into. When he said I don’t know how to be the one who isn’t okay, I slid the crumpled note from my bag—You don’t have to take care of everyone. Let me have a tur… Continues…
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